Speakers in consumer products (e.g., speakers in a mobile phone or tablet) are prone to mechanical and/or thermal failures if driven at high power levels. As the temperature of speaker components increases at high power levels, the likelihood of damage such as burn-out of the voice coil, melting of the insulation, and/or crumbling of the suspension increases. Despite being prone to thermal failures, there is an ever increasing demand in the market for louder audio from smaller speakers.
To prevent mechanical and/or thermal failures of speakers, existing system designs attempt to maintain the power level to the speaker voice coil within a safe operating range. Such attempts can be passive or dynamic. Dynamically controlling the power level to the speaker voice coil to avoid mechanical and/or thermal failures is challenging due to several variables, including changes to the ambient temperature within a consumer device with a speaker. For example, the ambient temperature within a mobile device changes due to surrounding atmospheric conditions, the variable operation of circuits within the mobile device, and/or the variable operation of the speaker. Due to issues such as the ambient temperature within a consumer device (e.g., a mobile device) being affected by multiple changing variables, the ambient temperature at difference locations within the device being different, and the speaker being positioned separate from other electronics, the ambient temperature at any location in the device is not an accurate measure of the ambient temperature within the speaker. Also, employing a temperature sensor at the location of the speaker is expensive and/or problematic. Due to the difficulty in tracking speaker ambient temperature directly, existing temperature control loops often compromise speaker volume to ensure speaker components are protected from mechanical and/or thermal failure.